


Problem Child

by scxlias



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Foster Care, M/M, foster kid!dex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7405927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scxlias/pseuds/scxlias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will’s parents die when he’s nine.</p><p>They die when he’s nine, a car crash that should’ve killed them all, and he’s left sitting in the waiting room of a hospital with a three month old baby sister in his arms  and nowhere to go.</p><p>They die when he’s nine and there’s no other family, no relatives, no godparents, no close family friends. There’s no one. William and Jessica Poindexter are completely alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Problem Child

**Author's Note:**

> Foster Kid!Dex is my new fave headcanon. Props to _[bittlespie](http://bittlespie.tumblr.com/post/146964402477/okay-fosterkiddex-who-is-terrified-that-his-team)_ on tumblr for the original idea/inspiration. 
> 
> join me in hell at _[epikegsters](http://epikegsters.tumblr.com/)_ to scream into the void if that's your speed

 

Will’s parents die when he’s nine. 

They die when he’s nine, a car crash that should’ve killed them all, and he’s left sitting in the waiting room of a hospital with a three month old baby sister in his arms  and nowhere to go. 

They die when he’s nine and there’s no other family, no relatives, no godparents, no close family friends. There’s no one. William and Jessica Poindexter are completely alone. 

They die when he’s nine and his sister is three months old and that’s all he has left. A crying baby in a cold, white waiting room, with a social worker smiling sadly at him and telling him about foster families. 

Will and Jess are put into the care of an older couple in Augusta, Maine, and left to fend for themselves. The couple is nice, but they’re not family, and Jess won’t stop crying, and Will is angry, so angry that his parents left him, and it’s just too much. 

Will is ten and Jess is a year old and they go to a family in Augusta, a family with two biological kids of their own, looking to help out how they can. Will doesn’t get along with their fourteen year old son, they do nothing but argue, the other boy rude and spoiled. Their seventeen year old daughter turns her nose up in disgust at both Will and Jess. 

Will is eleven and Jess is almost two and they’re moved again. The woman they go to next isn’t as kind. She’s strict with rules and schedules and Will hates her. She has two other foster kids, who she says need her attention, but they’re older. They can care for themselves a little better than his little sister. And yet, all of them get ignored. The two other kids, two older girls, try their best to help care for Jess, but there’s only so much they can do. Will stops listening. He hates this woman. Despises her. His sister deserves better. 

Will is twelve and Jess is three and they’re moved again. They’re labelled problem children. Will hears whispers of ‘never getting adopted’ and ‘too short tempered’ between adults when they think he can’t hear them. He holds Jess’s hand tightly and glares at social workers as they approach. They go to a family in Bar Harbor, Maine after that. The couple they live with now are strict. Will is a problem child who throws tantrums, screams, fights with his foster parents. Jess is a pain to deal with, makes too much noise, only listens to her brother. After a while, the couple decides they’re done tiptoeing around Will. He’s more trouble than he’s worth.

Will is fourteen and Jess is newly five and they’re sent to a new home in Kittery, Maine. Will knows to keep his head down now. He keeps his head low and hardly speaks to the young couple they’re placed with, only eats what he has to, doesn’t waste, doesn’t make a fuss, doesn’t cause trouble. He doesn’t set a toe out of line, unless it has to do with his sister. He does anything to protect her. If she makes a mistake, he makes a bigger one, to take the attention away from her. He’s used to being in trouble, it’s all he’s really good at. He can handle it. The young couple isn’t terrible, Will might actually call them nice, but of course it doesn’t last. They find out she’s pregnant, and then they find out its twins, and then they decide they can’t handle having Jess and Will around anymore. 

Will is sixteen and Jess is seven and they’re moved again. They don’t stay in that house long, but it’s more than enough to leave it’s mark. Will doesn’t like to talk about it. 

Will is just seventeen and Jess is almost eight and they’re moved to a family in Portland, Maine. They have a white picket fence and an enormous extended family and three kids of their own and Will… Will can already see how this is going to go. They’ll dote on Jess for a while, try to get through to him for a while, and then declare him a lost cause and Jess an annoyance and get rid of them. 

It’s how it always goes. 

Will is running out of time. He has mere months before he ages out of the foster program, and when that happens, he’s fucked. He doesn’t know what to do. So he’s the perfect child. He doesn’t fight. He does anything his new foster family asks without a question. He works in a repair shop for one of the many uncles the family has. He agrees to spend the summer working for another uncle on a lobster boat, while still working in the repair shop in the afternoons and nights. He helps take care of his foster siblings, all of whom are younger than him by at least five years. He’s like a live in nanny, when he’s not working. 

He doesn’t ask for anything. The money he gets from the repair shop, he uses to provide everything he can for him and Jess. He gets her new clothes as she grows and supplies anything else she needs, gets her anything she wants, if he can afford it. So what if he has to sew up holes in a few shirts so he can keep wearing them? Providing for Jess and being as little trouble as possible to their foster family is more important than him getting new clothes all the time. He can make do. 

He has less than a year. 

He wouldn’t admit it, but anxiety is eating him alive. He can’t bear the thought of being separated from Jess, but it’s looking more and more like that’s what’s going to happen, and Will doesn’t know how he’s going to provide for himself, or how he’s going to afford rent in even a shitty apartment, let alone afford going to Samwell like he wants, and he doesn’t know how he’ll ever deal with leaving Jess and he feels like he’s going to be sick all the time and he’s working himself into the ground so he doesn’t ask too much of his foster family and…

“We’d like to adopt you, Will. You and your sister.”

Will’s heart stops beating. 

“Will?” his foster mom, Tara, asks. 

“Are you okay, kiddo?” And that’s her husband Sean. 

“I’m not changing my name.”

Will wants to smack himself. They’re offering to adopt him. They want him to stay. For good. They want to keep him. For the first time in his life, someone wants to keep him and Jess around. They could have a family, and the first thing Will says to that is that he doesn’t want to change his name. He’s a goddamn idiot. 

How he’s feeling must show on his face, because Tara is quick to reassure him. “Will, honey, no. You don’t have to. You and Jess can keep your last name. You don’t need to take the Dowling name. We don’t want to try to replace your parents, but we do want to give you a family. We think you’re a good kid and I don’t want to see you age out of being in the foster system. I don’t want to see you separated from your sister. I want you to have a family. And you see how well Maggie and Kat get along with Jess. And you’ve been such a good role model for Rory; he loves having a big brother, even if you are still getting used to being here with us.”

Sean says nothing, but that’s not a surprise. He’s a man of few words. Will can relate. He’s thankful that no one tries to fill the silence that follows Tara’s words. 

There’s dead silence for a solid three minutes before they hear a crash and a round of giggles from upstairs and Jess and Maggie shouting at Kat through their laughter. 

That makes the decision for Will. He’s never heard Jess so happy. 

“Okay.” 

Tara’s grin is blinding. Sean, arms crossed over his chest, nods once, the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. Tara stands and pulls Will into a hug, even as he tenses under her touch slightly. When she releases him, Sean comes forward and claps a hand on Will’s shoulder. 

“I’ll be proud to call you two my kids. Always remember that.”

Will refuses to admit that that makes him tear up a little bit. 

He joins the hockey team at school after that. He finally knows he’ll be in one place for long enough for it to be worth it. 

There are plenty of hoops to jump through, and Will is still anxious about being too much of a hassle, and he still hates being a trouble to anyone, but it happens.

Will is almost eighteen and Jess is almost nine, and they get adopted by the Dowling family. 

After nine years, they’ve found a family. 

Will is accepted to Samwell, on a full ride athletic scholarship, to play for the hockey team. He finally gets his driver’s license. He works on his uncle’s lobster boat and at the repair shop the summer after he graduates high school to save up to get himself hockey gear for college. He has a family. 

He has a lot of adjusting to do, but he has a  _ family _ , and there’s no chance they’re going to get rid of him. 

He’s going to Samwell, and he’s going to play hockey and major in computer science and for the first time in nine years, William Poindexter is happy. 

The Samwell Men’s Hockey Team is a force of nature and a fucking disaster at the best of times, and Will loves it. He becomes Dex, and Dex has a new family in his team and Dex doesn’t have to worry about being someone’s guardian and Dex is happy. 

He gets to start over at Samwell. No one here knows he’s adopted. No one here knows he almost wasn’t. No one here knows that the siblings he talks about aren’t really related to him. No one here knows he spent nine years in foster care. No one here knows his parents are dead. No one knows, and Dex is happy. He can make a name for himself that doesn’t center around being ‘the foster kid’. He can be his own person. He can decide who he wants to be. 

So he doesn’t tell the team he’s adopted. 

He knows it wouldn’t go poorly, they’re great guys, but fear isn’t always rational and what if, what if, what if… So Dex says nothing. They don’t need to know.

Dex is happy, and that’s what matters.

And then he meets Derek Malik Nurse. 

When he’s around most of the team he’s fine. He hits it off with Chowder instantly, the two frogs becoming fast friends as soon as they meet, despite being vastly different. Bitty is like the older brother Dex always wished he could have. Ransom and Holster are loud and annoying and care about Dex and the other frogs in such a genuine way that Dex can practically feel his heart swelling. Jack is a hardass, but he and Dex bond over a shared music taste. Lardo is a force to be reckoned with and Dex is terrified and in awe of her. She reminds him of the older girls in their second foster home, who had helped him care for Jess when she was a baby. He likes Lardo. Shitty is… Shitty. Dex doesn’t know how to feel about him. 

And then there’s Nursey. 

Nursey is everything Dex despises. He comes from a loving family with two moms, he lives in a brownstone in Manhattan, went to a private high school, has never had a job in his life, has no concept of how much things cost because his family is rich and can afford to think like that. 

And he still complains. 

He complains all the fucking time and Dex wants to strangle him. 

Nursey has had everything he ever wanted handed to him on a silver platter, and he still complains about others having privilege. 

He complains about having to keep track of credit cards.

He complains about dropping his iPhone 6+ in the mud. 

He and Dex argue over everything. 

Dex sometimes seriously contemplates murder when he’s around Nursey. He only stops himself because of Chowder. 

Nursey drives him up a wall. 

Nursey is everything Dex wishes he could’ve had.

It takes him a while to get over it. He never really does.

Things start to get better by the spring semester of their freshman year. They’re at least no longer snapping at every word out of the other’s mouth. 

And then Bitty brings up baby pictures. His mother sent up a few in a care package he got early one morning just after they come back from spring break, and it’s all anyone in the Haus talks about for the next few days. 

It’s better than the time the sole topic of conversation was childhood memories for a week, but it’s far worse than when it was parents’ weekend (Dex’s parents had four young kids at home, they couldn’t exactly come for a whole weekend, he understood), or the many times Nursey’s solution was just “Dude, buy another one, it’s fine”.  

By the end of day one, Dex wants to scream. 

They’re all a little buzzed, sitting in a circle in the living room of the Haus, Bitty showing the baby pictures his mom had sent, Ransom and Holster pulling out baby pictures of each other, when Nursey starts up. 

“I really don’t have any baby pictures,” he says, words slow and drawn out, a pout tugging his lips down. 

Bitty frowns to match, “Well why not?”

Nursey shrugs. “I’m adopted. I mean, two moms and everything. They didn’t want just one of them to carry, so they adopted. And I was already like, a year old when they got me. So no baby pics.” He seems entirely unbothered by this fact by the time he’s done talking. Dex wants to hit him. He’d kill to still have pictures of when he and Jess were little. Something, anything besides wedding rings on a chain around his neck, to remember his biological parents by. He’d kill to be in Nursey’ position. 

Someone brings up a picture on baby Jack on their phone, and the conversation shifts to what a funny looking baby Jack was. Jack laughs and blushes and then Holster pulls up a picture of Ransom, and Lardo finds a picture of Shitty and soon the whole group of them are fighting to see who can find the most embarrassing baby pictures of one of their teammates. No one asks why Holster has a framed picture of baby Ransom. 

Shitty turns to Dex after a few minutes and shouts, “Hey!”

All eyes turn on Dex. He can feel his heart racing. He can’t breathe. He freezes. 

Chowder grins widely, scrambling towards Dex on his knees to throw an arm around his shoulders. Chow is only two beers in and he’s trashed. “Oh my  _ goooood.  _ Baby Dex was probably so cute. With the freckles and everything! He’d be adorable, right guys!” 

Bitty nods, expression very serious as he looks at Dex. “The freckles and red hair. They work for you now, Poindexter. When you were a kid, you musta been drawing in every old lady within a square mile to come and pinch those cheeks of yours.”

Bitty is drunk. 

Dex wants to scream, or sink into the floor. 

He finishes his beer. 

“ _ Dexy, _ ” Holster sings, pointing his beer bottle at Dex, “show us baby you. You musta been so red all the time. Like, your hair and your little baby face. C’mon, let’s see it.”

Holster is also drunk.

Dex is getting angry. 

He stands to go get another beer. 

“I bet your ears looked ridiculously huge when your head was smaller, huh, Poindexter?” Nursey says, leaning back on his hands, smirk tugging his lips to one side.

Dex snaps. 

“I wouldn’t fucking know Nurse! I don’t know!” he shouts, rounding on Nursey, solo cup forgotten somewhere on the floor. 

Nursey jumps. 

In fact, everyone does. 

“Dude,” Nursey starts, cocking an eyebrow, “chill, man. We’re just chirping you. It can’t be that bad. Show us a pic.”

Dex honestly doesn’t know how he resists decking Nursey, right there. 

“I. Can’t,” Dex grinds out through clenched teeth.

“Why not? Don’t be so stuck up. We all showed each other baby pics. It’s not a big deal.”

Dex loses it then. “I can’t, Nurse! I can’t! I fucking can’t! I don’t have any! There aren’t any, anywhere. They don’t exist. The earliest picture I have is the picture they took for my fucking file when I was nine years old, okay? That’s it! Fucking drop it!”

Nursey doesn’t drop it. He just stands up, chest to chest with Dex and asks, “Your file? The fuck are you talking about?”

“Leave it,” Dex answers.

“Tell us.”

“Drop it, Derek.”

“Tell me, Will!”

Dex does hit him then. His slap leaves an angry red handprint on Nursey’s cheek and knocks him flat on his ass. 

“I’m a fucking foster kid, okay? You happy? My parents died when I was nine and left me and Jess alone and no one wants a ten year old boy! There are no pictures because we were never anywhere long enough for someone to want to remember us! I’m fucking lucky I got adopted when I did, so I don’t really give a fuck about baby pictures, okay? Now fucking leave it alone, for the love of fucking god!”

Dex storms out of the living room and into the kitchen. 

Lardo and Chowder follow him after a while. He can’t tell how long it’s been. 

He says nothing, so Chowder breaks the silence.

“Why didn’t you tell us? Were you afraid we’d think badly of you or something?” he asks, voice tinged with hurt and worry. 

Dex puts his head in his hands and tries to fight off the tears he can feel coming on. “It was stupid. But no one really wants to go around telling people they were so unwanted, they didn’t get adopted until they were seventeen, you know?”

His last words are broken with a half sob. He scrubs his hands over his face, letting out a sound of frustration. He hates crying. Chowder sits next to him at the kitchen table and wraps an arm around his shoulders. Lardo places a hand on Dex’s back. 

Except when Dex looks up, Lardo is across the kitchen. 

Nursey is there, hand on Dex’s back, face unreadable, a vaguely hand shaped mark still on his face. Dex shrugs his hand off. 

“I don’t want your pity Nurse. Go back to complaining about how you had to wait a whole year as an infant to get adopted,” Dex bites out harshly. His words are sharp, meant to cause pain.

Nursey doesn’t even flinch.

“A year as a baby is nothing compared to what you had to do. How long was it?”

“What?” Dex asks, hands already curling into fists on the table.

“How long did you have to wait? What happened?” Nursey takes the seat on Dex’s other side as Lardo and Chowder silently exit the room. Dex takes a deep breath, wills his hands to relax.

“I was nine. Jess was a newborn. It was a car accident. Drunk driver. Should’ve killed us all, but Jess and I got out unscathed. Bounced around foster homes for the next nine-ish years? Some were decent. Others I don’t ever wanna think about again. I was officially adopted eleven months ago. Just before I aged out of the system and was left to my own devices. Tara didn’t want me to have to fend for myself or to be separated from my sister. The Dowlings adopted us. Here we are now.”

The room is silent for a moment, only the muted sounds of conversation from the next room and Nursey’s breathing disturbing the quiet. Dex can hardly make himself breathe. 

He’d hit Nursey. He’d screamed at him. He’d told him the whole truth. 

He is losing his goddamn mind. 

“I’m sorry, Dex.”

Dex balks at Nursey. 

“What.” It’s not a question.

“I’m sorry. That sounds terrible.”

Dex scoffs. “I don’t want your pity, Nurse.”

“Good. You’re not getting it,” Nursey says quietly. “You’re getting an apology. I was a dick back there, and I’m sorry.”

Dex shrugs. “I’m the one who smacked you. I should be the one apologizing.”

“I probably deserved it.”

“You didn’t. I’m just… a problem child. I’m a ‘behavior issue’. Says so in my file,” Dex says, letting out a humorless laugh. 

Nursey shakes his head, mouth set in a firm line, and places a hand on each of Dex’s shoulders. “No. None of that. That’s bullshit. You’re not a problem or an issue. You’re not unwanted, Will. You’re wanted. You’ve got a family that cares about you now. You’ve got Jess. You’ve got us. We’ve got your back. You’ve got me. Dexy, Will, you’ve always got me, no matter how much you hate me, you’ve al--”

“I don’t hate you,” Dex cuts him off. “I hate your complaining. But I don’t hate you.”

Nursey smiles, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to Dex’s forehead. “Good. ‘Cause I don’t hate you either.”

**Author's Note:**

> the tumblr: _[epikegsters](http://epikegsters.tumblr.com/)_


End file.
